Apoiando o reúso em uma plataforma de ecossistema de software científico através do gerenciamento de contexto e de proveniência

Abstract

Considering the current experimentation scenario and the increasing use of large-scale applications, the experiment data management is growing complex. The scientific experimentation process requires support for collaborative and distributed activities. Managing contextual and provenance information plays a key role in the scientific domain. Detailed logging of the steps to produce results, as well as the environment context information could allow scientists to reuse these results in future experiments and reuse the experiment or parts of it in another context. The goal of this work is to present a provenance and context metadata management approach that support researchers in the reuse of knowledge about scientific experiments conducted in a collaborative and distributed platform. First, the context and provenance management life cycle phases were analyzed, considering existing models. Then it was proposed a conceptual framework to support the analysis of contextual elements and provenance data of scientific experiments. An ontology capable of extracting implicit knowledge in this domain was specified. This approach was implemented in a scientific ecosystem platform. An evaluation conducted through case studies shown evidences that this architecture is able to help researchers during the reuse and reproduction of scientific experiments. Context elements and data provenance, associated with inference mechanisms, can be used to support the reuse in scientific experimentation process.